DAP currently integrates only with WordPress-based Forums – like bbPress, Simple:Press, etc.

What this essentially achieves, is that once your forum plugin has been integrated with DAP (explained below), anyone who is a member in your DAP-powered membership site, will also be automatically be logged in to your forum when they log in to your membership site.

So they won’t have to log in twice [like, once into DAP and once into your forum].

Here’s how you set up the DAP/forum integration.

1. Download the 3rd party wordpress forum plugin
2. Install it as per their instructions. We don’t support the installation or setup of the forum plugin itself.
3. Log in to your DAP Admin Dashboard and click on “Config > Advanced”.
4. You have two settings on the page that applies to forum integration:
   “Sync DAP User data and WP User data”
   “Sync WP data only for PAID users“.(Both are explained further below.)
5. Pick “Y” or “N” for each of them, and you’re all set.

First, a quick explanation of both settings.

1) Sync DAP User data and WP User data

If you turn this to “Y” (for “Yes”), then every time someone logs into DAP, they’re automatically logged into WordPress too (with a “User” role). And because they’re logged into WordPress, that means they’re also logged into your forum (because you are using a WordPress-based Forum Plugin which already integrates with your WordPress blog.)

2) Sync WP data only for PAID users

This one matters only if you have set (1) above to “Y”.

So once you have decided to turn on the DAP/Forum plugin integration, then if you want only your “PAID” members to have access to the forum, then set this to “Y”.

If you don’t care about both FREE and PAID users accessing your forum, then set this to “N”.

When your visitor encounters a “Sorry, you’re unable to access this content” page that has the DAP Padlock image on it, you can customize the text that shows up below the padlock by doing this:

1) Open the file error.php that is stored in the /dap/inc/ folder.

2) RENAME it as (or COPY it as) customerror.php.

3) You can put ANY kind of HTML content within this. Images, javascript, css,, buttons, text, whatever. Any HTML can be used in this file.

4) Upload this new file customerror.php back to same folder /dap/inc/

5) error.php doesn’t matter any more. Whether you delete it, or just leave it alone, the fact that there is a customerror.php file in the same directory means that DAP won’t even bother about error.php any more.

6) Future updates of DAP will not touch your customerror.php file. So updates or upgrades will not mess with your custom error page copy.

DAP has a feature where if a user logs in from more IP addresses than you’ve configured (default: “5″), then his account automatically gets “Locked”, and both he and you (the admin) will get an email stating that the user’s account has been locked.

And you could then unlock them yourself, or wait for the user to send you an email and ask to be unlocked.

Either way, here’s how to “Unlock” Users:

1. Search for the User by email on the “Users > Manage” screen
2. Click on the name. You are now in “Edit User” screen where you can see the user’s full details
3. Next to user’s name, you will now see a button called “Unlock User” (You will see this only if the status of the user is “Locked”, and won’t see it for other regular users).
4. Click on the “Unlock User” button. That’s it.

When you click the button, the user’s login records are deleted, and the previously recorded IP addresses are deleted.

So he basically starts with a new count.

If you want to configure how many different IP addresses a user is allowed to login from, do it on the “Config > Advanced” tab.

DAP employes a very unique “Pay As You Go” model.

It’s very similar to the “Pay As You Go” model used by cell phone companies.

You pay first, then new content (or “cell phone minutes” in the mobile world) gets released to you. You stop paying, you don’t get new content (minutes).

So let’s say a member (Joe Customer) joined your membership site this month, and this is January. So he’s on Month #1 in January.

When he first signs up (free or paid trial, or actual 1st month’s subscription), then his start and end dates in DAP on your site look like this:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: Jan 31, 2009

(Of course, DAP uses actual dates like “01/01/2009″, but “Jan 1, 2009″ is easier to read for most people, especially an international audience – so using the above date format just for the purposes of this post).

Then, let’s say, his February subscription payment comes in. Now DAP “extends” his access to your content by a month. So now the dates look like this:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: Feb 28, 2009

Now your member Joe has access to all content from Jan 1 to Feb 28 (meaning, about 60 days worth of “dripped content”).

Then end of February, he decides to cancel his membership for whatever reason (or his credit card gets declined or rejected while processing payment for Feb). So no payment comes in for March.

Now because no payment came in, DAP doesn’t really do anything about his access dates. So they continue to stay at:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: Feb 28, 2009

So any content that you have configured to be dripped on, say, Day #61 (which is Month #3), won’t be available to Joe, even though he continues to remain an “Active” member within DAP, and continues to get your autoresponder and br0adcast emails, and even continues to have access to your affiliate program and continues to earn commissions.

Actually, it gets even better – just because Joe’s end date expired, he basically now has NO access to ANY content on your web site (even Month #1’s content).

[Note: Just so you know, DAP does have a feature to enable "Access to Previously Paid-for Content". Keep reading for details.]

Now all Joe has lost is just the “access to the content”.

So let’s say you exchange emails with him, ask him why he wanted to cancel, and try to convince him to come back (or get him to use a new, valid credit card).

Now remember that Joe is still at the end of February’s content (Month #2). So whenever the next payment comes in (be it in March, April, or 1 year later), Joe now gets access only to the 3rd month’s content, and not, say, the 10th month content.

So even though it is now say, May, because Joe’s next payment came in just now, his access dates now look like this:

Start date: Jan 1, 2009
End date: March 31, 2009

So that’s how DAP takes care of your content and makes sure that when members cancel or their payment doesn’t come in for whatever reason, your content cannot be accessed by unauthorized users.

But let’s say you want to be really fair and look like a “generous, honest” guy to your members. In that case, you want to make sure that if someone cancels their subscription 6 months after being with you, you don’t want to ’screw’ them just because they stopped paying you. Who knows, they’ll probably come back if you keep showing to them what kind of content you’re building. Or they may buy your other products.

So now you want to make sure that they get access to the last 6 months worth of content, for which they have actually paid for.

There is a Configuration element in DAP where you can just turn this feature on, and members can instantly start access all “Previously Paid-for Content”.

So that’s how DAP puts a unique twist on cancellations and refunds.

Removing User Access to a Product

1. First search for user in the “Users > Manage” screen.

2. At the end of the user’s row of information, you’ll see a link called “Remove”.

Every time you click on “Remove”, the user’s access is “rolled back” by a month (or the recurring period of the product). So if they have been a member for 3 months, then the first time you click on “Remove”, the user’s access is rolled back by 1 month, so the user now has access to your content for 2 months. So, two more clicks on “Remove” and the product is completely removed from the user’s account. We realize this is a little bit of an inconvenience when removing large number of users from a product, so in the next release, we will be adding a feature that makes it easier.

Deleting users

If you wish to completely remove the users from your database, then check the checkbox next to the user’s row, and then in the upper right hand section, click on the “Go” button next to the text “Fully Delete Selected Users from the database”. That should do it.

You can protect an entire category within your WP blog simply by adding the permalink to that category to a “Product”, just like you would protect the permalink of a blog post.

So, browse to your blog in your browser, visit the category that you wish to protect on your blog. The link will probably look like http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/doc/category/livelinks/

So copy the link that you see in your browser (this is the “permalink” for that category), log in as DAP Admin, and add it to one of your products.

IMPORTANT:

When you add an entire category of posts to DAP, then all posts in that category – posts currently in that category, as well posts you will be adding in the future under that category – will all become automatically protected.

So if you add the entire category to DAP and then configure that “link” to be available on a certain day, or date, then remember that ALL posts within that category will automatically become available on that day or date.

WARNING:

Also remember that because you are adding an entire category of posts, and not individual posts, you won’t be able to configure individual posts within that category to be dripped at various times. Only the “category” link can be configured to be dripped, and not the individual posts within it.

A) Protecting Files Within WordPress

The fastest way to protect files is to upload them to your wordpress blog when you are writing a new post. All such files will be stored in a folder called “wp-content/uploads/….”.

Alternatively, you could also upload files directly using FTP, to the “wp-content/uploads/” folder and DAP is configured right off-the-shelf to protect any file inside the “wp-content/uploads/” folder.

B) Protecting Regular Web Site Files Outside of WordPress

1. Go to the following directory within the “dap” folder on your desktop:

dap > client > website

2. Open the .htaccess file in this folder.

3. In your web site’s root folder (where you have your home page – index.php or index.html)…

i) if you already have an existing .htaccess file., then open it and COPY the text from Step 2 above and PASTE it at the very end of this file.

ii) If there is no .htaccess in your root folder, then simply copy the file from Step 2 to your web site’s root folder.

That’s it.

TESTING:
Now add the link to your non-wordpress file to DAP from the DAP Admin Control Panel.

Then, open a different browser (not different window – a totally different browser – like, if you’re logged in as DAP admin in FireFox, open IE)  and try to access your file directly and see if DAP redirects you to the login screen.

If not, take a deep breath – it’s NOT DAP

It’s just that you missed something (or screwed something up .

Revisit the steps above, and if you still can’t figure it out, you might want to think about uploading the file to wordpress (see Section A above) .

But if you’d rather get this working, then just open a support ticket, and we’re standing by to help you

That’s it!

1. Go to your blog. Copy the “permalink” of one of your blog posts.
2. Go to DAP > Admin > Products screen.
3. Scroll down to the “Add Files To File Sequence” section.
4. Paste the permalink in the Add a full URL text box on the left, and click “Add URL”.

That’s it.

Go back to your blog and refresh the page. You should no longer see the blog post you just ‘protected’.

Now DAP already provides you with a built-in login form, at YourSite.com/dap/login.php

But if you want to put this form “within” your WordPress blog, so as to give your login form the same Look & Feel as the rest of your blog, all you need to do, is…

1) Create a WordPress “Page” (not ‘post’) with the text %%LOGIN_FORM%% in the body of the page, and a title of say, Login, and save the new page. If you used the text “Login” for the title, then the actual link to this page would be YourSite.com/blog/login

2) This page now shows up as “Login” along with the rest of your “pages” on your blog.

3) Go to DAP Admin > Config > Advanced (drop down). Scroll down to the field that says:

Location of your login page (eg., if using WordPress). Should start with a forward slash (`/`)

In the text box, enter the link to the login page from Step 1, minus the domain name. So, it would look like:

/blog/login

That’s it!

When someone clicks on the “Login” link, or tries to access a post that they are not authorized to, the user is redirected to the login page.

Related: Where is the Logout Link?

For Advanced Users Only

That means, if you read this post and don’t understand a word, then this is NOT for you.

For this to work, you must have already installed DAP WP LiveLinks.

Now, when someone comes to your wordpress blog, assuming you have already activated DAP LiveLinks, then none of the posts you have protected will even show up on the home page, or will show up if someone tries to visit them directly (say, from a bookmark or link in an email). Which means, as far as your visitor is concerned, those posts don’t even exist in your blog.

Now as powerful as this plugin is, from an SEO perspective, if your visitor (who is not a member, and one who is not logged in) can’t even see the post, then neither can Google. This means, if you do a blog-and-ping, when Google arrives at the permalink of your new post, because the post is protected, DAP will redirect Google to your login page. This means, you don’ get the benefit of SEO for your new post.

Also, from a “Curiosity” standpoint, if you protect all of the posts, then your visitor will only see a handful of non-protected blog posts.

So, giving them a “sneak-peek” of the post your home page as well as on the permalink, is a great way to get them excited about your content.

How to turn on Sneak-Peek

Go to DAP Admin > Config > WordPress Sneak-Peek

It is set to “N” (no) by default. Change this to “Y” and click on the “Update” button to save the change.

And then when they click on the “more” button to read the rest of the post, the full post is protected anyway, and they are presented with a login screen.

WARNING: VERY IMPORTANT IF YOU TURN ON SNEAK-PEEK

As soon as you turn on Sneak-Peek, DAP will show all content from your blog posts, but only up to the “More” tag. This means, if you don’t have a “More” tag in any of your content, then all of your blog posts will show to all users, regardless of whether they have access or not.

So, the most important thing here is this:

SNEAK-PEEK and MORE are INSEPARABLE.

If you do sneak-peek, you MUST include a “More” tag.

So when you create a WordPress blog post, split the post into two parts using the “More” tag. This creates a “public preview” portion of the actual post, that shows up on your blog’s home page and in the permalink when that post is displayed. To read the rest of the post, your visitor has to click on the “More” link, and that’s when depending on whether the user has access, the rest of the post will be displayed.